Blood and Glass
by IzzyBells
Summary: She met them all through Grantaire, and she met Grantaire after a bar fight. Rated for language, alcohol, and to be safe. Unsure if I want to continue this or not, let me know!
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Hi, this is I think the first Les Mis fic I'm posting, though it's not the first I've written. I'm not new to the fandom, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the canon characters accurate, as I haven't read the book (I do plan on it eventually when I have time) and I'm pretty much going off of what I can glean from the musical and what other fanfic authors have done, with some very general help from Wikipedia. This is something I started and I don't know if I want to continue it or not, so any feedback in that department would be very welcome. Thanks, and enjoy!**

She met Grantaire on a humid summer night, the damp smell of unshed rain in the air, while she was serving drinks and he was punching another man in the jaw. He was drunk, to be fair, as was the other man. She had no doubt that the fight started over something silly that would have been sorted with a few simple words had both men been sober, but alcohol riddled the mind with slow stupidity. Soon the thing became an all-out bar brawl thanks to a couple flying bottles that happened to collide with innocent bystanders. Half the customers were kicked out that night.

Well, that earlier statement was a lie. She didn't necessarily meet Grantaire during the fight. That was merely when he caught her attention and sparked a dull curiosity that had more to do with boredom than real interest. She met him a half hour afterward, when her shift ended and she was leaving the bar. Grantaire was sitting slumped over in the doorway across the otherwise abandoned street. The poor man certainly appeared much the worse for wear, so she huffed and crossed the pavement to at least check that he was still breathing. To her surprise and concern, upon closer inspection, she found that blood had stained his white shirt near his shoulder, and more blood glistened in a trickle down his lip from a crooked and swollen nose.

It took a few nudges with the toe of her shoe to wake him, but once he was conscious again, the job of hauling him to his feet might as well have been performed with his dead weight for all the effort he put into it. After a slap to the uninjured back of his head and a sharp word or two, she found herself supporting most of Grantaire's weight by way of his arm draped around her shoulders.

"Is your home far, monsieur?" she asked gruffly.

"Other side of town...I think..." he mumbled.

She brought him to her own apartment out of convenience. Unceremoniously, she dumped him on her couch, where he flopped with a grunt, so she could get a clean rag or two and some water. He introduced himself as she brought his nose back to its proper alignment with a soft crunch.

"I'm Grantaire, by the way."

She simple nodded in acknowledgment before going to wipe the blood away from his face. While she rinsed the cloth in the water, turning it a lovely shade of rosy pink against the white bowl, she saw him lick the rest of the blood from the corner of his mouth out of the corner of her eye. Thus, she switched her attention to his shoulder. The stain on his shirt had grown bigger. Not without annoyance at her lot in life, she growled, demanded he bare his shoulder while she went searching for large bandaids. She turned away and began rifling through drawers and cupboards.

"Lucky for you, I have some medical gauze and tape for whatever reason," she commented, returning with her prize (and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide) to her previous spot on the edge of the couch.

Wiping the blood from his skin revealed a stab wound, probably from a knife or a shard of something else sharp. Regardless, she cleaned the wound as best as she could before taping gauze over the injury. She held a dry towel firmly over the spot, hoping to stop any bleeding that persisted. Grantaire whined in his throat about the pressure, but she silenced that with a strong, quick glare.

"Either I put pressure on this or you bleed out," she hissed. "It's Juliette, by the way."

Grantaire crashed on her couch that night. She tried to ignore that he was there, snoring softly in his alcohol-induced slumber, as she washed her face and changed into pajamas. Around one in the morning, she managed to fall asleep with the Hamilton soundtrack in her ears. It was a very sound sleep, and she woke the next morning to her digital alarm clock raising hell across her bedroom and her earbuds wrapped harmlessly but annoyingly around her face.

She had no eight AM classes because she wasn't stupid, but she still set her alarm for seven-thirty. She moved slowly in the morning. With a withering glare shot at the grumbling man on her couch, she shuffled over into her small kitchenette to start to coffee pot before shuffling back over to the bathroom to pee and brush her teeth. Only when the first half of her mug of coffee was gone did the realization hit her: she had let a stranger sleep in her apartment last night. He could've killed her, or stolen everything valuable, or something. A sip or two later, and she had made her peace with it and no longer cared.

Grantaire still lay on his back on her couch, both arms draped over his head, moaning about his headache and being woken up by her demonic alarm clock. With an exasperated huff, she stood to get him some ibuprofen and a glass of ice water.

"This is why you shouldn't get pissed drunk," she said, setting the water on her coffee table (with a coaster of course) with a thunk. "Ibuprofen if you want it, which I'm sure you must, and you should drink all of that water; you're probably dehydrated." She drained the last of her coffee and started towards her bathroom to take her shower.

"What was your name again?"

"Juliette," she called over her shoulder.

She emerged from the bathroom wrapped in her bathrobe and walked straight to her bedroom, not even flicking her eyes to Grantaire once. That would only make the situation awkward, which she did not need. Fifteen minutes later and she came back out to the sitting room/kitchen/dining room...area. Properly dressed now in jeans and a t-shirt, she noted that Grantaire had moved to a slouched but upright position, leaning against the far armrest of the couch. She perched on the other armrest.

Grantaire was young, probably not more than two or three years older than herself. He wasn't conventionally attractive, but she found his appearance fascinating, if only because of her artist's eye for unique and sketch-worthy people. Dark circles hung under his eyes, and the mass of black curls on his head were smashed down on one side and sticking up in the back. That was definitely a blue smear of dried paint on his chin, and his fingers were stained with pen ink and charcoal. An alcoholic artist, then. She'd heard of stranger things.

"So...I have class in about an hour." It was now roughly nine o'clock. "I'd prefer not to leave you in my apartment alone since I barely know you, so if you need a ride anywhere, I can-"

"Where do you go?"

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Like, to school?"

"Yeah. I live on one of the campuses around the city." The normal-sounding explanation was accompanied with a weary eye rub and a wince, telltale signs that he was in no normal state.

"UPMC. If you live across the city like you said, then you definitely aren't on my way."

Grantaire scratched at the back of his head. "Remind me where we are?"

"This is the Latin Quarter...how drunk were you?"

"I've been worse. My friend's a UPMC student. Do you know a Joly?"

"I don't know. Sounds familiar." She shook herself suddenly. "Wait, we're getting off topic. Where do you live?"

The man grinned. Or maybe it was a grimace. "Latin Quarter, Paris IV campus. I must've been really turned around last night."

She snorted and got up. "Well I guess that means I don't have to worry about you. Are you a student?"

"No, but I was. I stuck around after graduation. Got a BFA. What about you? You're at UPMC, what are you studying?"

"I'm working towards a bachelor's in biology. Pre-med," she answered, standing with her hip popped. "Anywhere specific you want me to take you? Or would you rather walk?"

Grantaire stood, and his arm shot out to steady himself as he swayed. "You know the Café Musain?"

She nodded and looked around for her shoes. "If we leave now I should be able to drop you off there and then make it to class with time to spare," she stated.

"Perfect."

The car ride passed in silence. She didn't ask why he wanted to be taken to the café rather than an apartment building because it wasn't her business, and she wasn't all that curious either. When they arrived at the café, an older building with a fading sign and specials painted in the windows, Grantaire got out of her car, squinting and cursing at the sun, and turned to lean back into the car.

"Thanks for letting me crash on your couch. And the ride," he said.

"Any time."

He glanced back over his shoulder at the café. "Hey," turning back around, "do you want to come in for a latte or something? I think I see Joly in there."

She checked the time on the clock in her car's dashboard. "No thank you," she answered. "I should go now. Sorry."

"No problem. Thanks again." Grantaire backed away from the car and turned to head into the Café Musain. He didn't look back.

She drove away and thought that that would be the last she saw of Grantaire. She was wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: So...here's another chapter. Still not sure exactly where this is going. Leave me reviews with ideas, if you'd like. Enjoy!**

About half a month later, she ran into him in a linoleum-floored hallway, trailing after a man who she assumed must be Joly, the pre-med student Grantaire had mentioned. Literally. She walked into him. Her to-go mug tumbled from her hands with the two textbooks she was carrying. The lid stayed on the mug, but she had flipped up the thing that flips up so she could actively sip from it, so while she didn't lose all of her drink, enough coffee spilled onto the floor to cause her to slip, having already been unbalanced by the hard knock into Grantaire. On the floor, she grabbed up her mug to minimize the spill and then reached for her textbooks, completely unbothered by the whole event. It was just one of those days. Graintaire turned to see who he had knocked over, and apologized with a swear word or two when he saw who she was. He offered her a hand, which she placed her textbooks into. She grabbed the other hand that he quickly put out and let him haul her off the floor. Probably-Joly had stopped to watch the event, which took place in under half a minute.

"Joly," Grantaire said, "this is...shit, I forget your name, sorry, but this is that girl that let me sleep in her apartment that one night I got really piss-drunk. And this is Joly," he finished.

"Juliette, nice to meet you, Joly," she said, shaking the other student's hand.

"Pleasure is mine," he replied. She noticed he seemed to physically restrain himself from wiping his hand off on his jeans and instead held it gingerly by his side. "Are you alright? That seemed like a nasty fall. Not burned anywhere? Bruising? Your drink looks hot."

She looked down at the puddle at their feet. "No, I'm okay, thanks. I should clean this up, though."

"Yes, perhaps, um...the men's bathroom is just a bit down the hall," Joly said, looking around quickly. "I'll go grab some paper towels." He took off then towards the bathroom, leaving her with Grantaire.

"He's probably going to go wash his hands while he's in there," he said after a beat. "Joly's kind of a germaphobe. And a hypochondriac. I have no idea how he'll handle dealing with sick people all day as a doctor."

"At least he'll always be healthy," she commented. "Are all of your friends quirky or is it just the one?"

"No, they've all got their defining character traits, I guess you could say. One's stoic to a fault, one's a philosophy nerd, one has a knack for getting hurt, one makes fans-"

"Fans? Like paper fans, or-"

"Yep. One gets into a lot of fights and makes really clever jokes, one flirts with anything that moves, one likes poetry and knows a ton of languages, two are sickeningly in love with each other, one works herself to the bone and is in love with one of the ones who's sickeningly in love with not-her, and then you met Joly the hypochondriac, and me, the drunk. Half of us are in law school, a couple of us aren't in school, and everyone else's interests are scattered all over the place."

She blinked. Grantaire had sparked her curiosity again. "Well damn it, now I have to meet them all."

"Good," he said, grinning. "We don't have hardly enough women in our gang. Seriously, there's only two ladies, Ep and Cosette. We're really unbalanced gender distribution-wise."

"And why is that a problem?"

"Well, according to Enjolras, it isn't. But we are a political club, and Combeferre says we need more girl members so we don't come across as sexist or something," Grantaire answered, rolling his eyes.

She frowned. "Well, it's not like you can help who's interested in your ideals, right?"

"It's more complicated than that, but it's a lot of explaining that I don't feel like getting into. You'll see tonight."

One of her eyebrows shot up. "Why? What's happening tonight?" she asked. She noticed Joly finally returning with a stack of paper towels from the dispenser in the bathroom.

"You're meeting the gang is what's happening," Grantaire answered. "Joly," he said as the other man crouched down to mop up the spilled coffee off the flecked tile, "Juliette should totally come meet our friends, right?"

"If she wants to, R. I can't say Enjolras will necessarily welcome you, Mad'moiselle, but you're welcome to come to our meeting tonight regardless," he said, looking up at her. "That should do it," he said again, and rose with his fist full of coffee-soaked paper towels.

"Thanks for cleaning that up, man, you really didn't have to," she said.

"No, it's fine. I don't mind, really."

The trio stood awkwardly off to the side of the hallway for another moment or two before she took her textbooks back from Grantaire and excused herself. She said she had a class she needed to be at within the next few minutes. Joly echoed her sentiment and bid her a lovely afternoon, and Grantaire followed him without more than a nod in her direction.

She had made it mostly down the rather long hallway before someone grabbed her elbow and spun her around. Grantaire. "Café Musain, where you dropped me off. Eight. This evening. If you want to," he said, speaking disjointedly as he had apparently run back the length of the hallway to get to her. Then he dashed off again. With a deep breath in and a long exhale, she turned back around and continued down the hall. Did she really want to be social tonight? After all, she had about twenty million different things to study for, not to mention she was working tonight...

At 7:30 she was leaving her apartment, but it was to go to the bar, not the café, for her shift, not for a political meeting. She didn't have the time, nor did she have the money, to sacrifice potential tips for something extra.


End file.
